What Is The Point in Healing?
Missing the Point
We have been lost for a while and we are missing the point of healing, big time. We think we know what holistic healing is for, and we don’t. It has become a phrase without meaning.
Many people are doing one type of healing work or another.
Natural is IN, Organic is IN… And we work at it. With grim determination. Boring diets and fistfuls of supplements are no fun, but they pay off so we…work at it. And why do we go to all that trouble in the first place?
Isn’t it obvious? So we can feel good, thrive and have a great life!
When it is too late
In fact, it is not as obvious as it seems. I have found that most people focus on their health after they get sick. Before that they sort of knew about it, procrastinated and didn’t really get around to it much. Illness sends them into a flurry of activity, as if doing massive amounts of herbs and therapies can quickly compensate for years of neglect.
Then there is the whole idea that natural lifestyle is “good for you”, that it is morally superior to any other mainstream lifestyle. Taken to the extreme, we are confronted with dogma and rigid rules about food mostly, but we also see ritualistic tendencies in other lifestyle fads.
It is trendy to be “healthy”
An organic sustainable lifestyle is also a status statement and gets us membership with the progressive crowd. How authentic are we about it all? I have talked to many people about this and found many lacking in depth of conviction or even simple understanding of why they do it.
A small group of people are actually curious about the body and the mind and they enjoy the learning, the trying out of different things. Sometimes they take courses and become healers themselves so they can teach others. How much of what is offered today reaches beyond the purely materialistic? Very little.
The grand scheme of things
In my opinion, there is way more about healthy living that is really important and goes unnoticed. And very few people write about it and very few people read what they wrote.
Take biodynamic farming or the Waldorf education, for example. How many people realize that both are meant to integrate physical life into the vast universe of cosmic and spiritual reality out there? That healing of the body and mind are meant to create a pure vessel for our soul. That there is a grand scheme to all that is available to us if only we could grasp it.
When our mind and our emotions are chaotic and out of control, our body takes a hit and malfunctions. When our body is weak and polluted, our mind and emotions become distorted and we get mental disease. Reality is replaced by illusion when we are not in good shape, when we feel sick and scared, when we feel out of control.
It is that state of poor health and mental fog that we end up missing the point. We confuse the means to health with its otherwise profound purpose.
Most of all we want Life
We want to be healthy because we want the strength to be able to do what we love, to go places and be able to eat, sleep and breathe freely. We want to be happy – not anxious, tired or restless.
But most of all we want to be healthy because deep down inside we have yearning to do something meaningful in life; we have big plans and dreams, we have places to go, people to love. And for all that, we need to be strong, to feel stable and to feel free from constraints to our free will and creative spirit.
It is for those things in life that we truly want to be healthy. Only we get so caught up in the superficial formulas of natural living, that we tend to forget.
And fulfillment of our purpose
To me, true health is when we feel alive and when we remember – that we came into this world for a reason, that we have gifts we can’t wait to use and that we have love to give and much to receive in life. And for all that to happen, we need a healthy body, clear mind and depths of feeling to motivate us and guide us along.
Being fully alive is a goal worth pursuing. Health is the means to get there.